by MARY HOCKING
‘The play-reading people could do with a bit of guidance. Otherwise they’ll decide on something that it will be impossible to produce.’
The girl who had been jiving was still with the play-reading group, but she kept glancing back at the dancers and twisting her body provocatively to the music. Wilson supposed that she was at least five years younger than Jill; her hair, dyed the colour of a dark-red carnation, was piled high on her head like a disintegrating bird’s nest, her eyelashes were ludicrous; but the jerky movements of her puny little body showed an art well-mastered. Beside her, Jill seemed gauche and inexperienced and awkwardly aware of it. She sat down and took one or two plays to study, but every so often her eyes strayed to the gyrating carnation girl.
Wilson stood uncertainly in the middle of the room. It had suddenly become very hot. The noise and the whirling figures confused him, he seemed to be caught up in a crescendo of aimless violence, but whether the violence emanated from without or from within his own being he was not sure. The girl who was organizing the play-reading group went across to the record player and turned the volume down, one of the boys turned it up again immediately. She looked across at Wilson, but he pretended not to notice. He could tell by the throbbing of his pulse that if he went anywhere near the thing he would smash it. He decided to join the chess players, crouched at the far end of the room, contemplating their pawns with bovine detachment.
He was half-way across the room when the girl screamed; the sound shrilled on his nerves with all the urgency of a warning bell announcing an emergency long expected. He swung round. In the table-tennis area there was a huddle of figures, pushing, swaying, clawing. He could see one of the girls pounding with her fist at a boy’s shoulder, her face white and grotesquely twisted. He could not see the other girl. The jivers had stopped; they were poised like figures in a statue dance, wavering on the brink of movement. He elbowed his way between them before they could decide to participate; they fell back, watching him uncertainly. At the moment, the initiative was with him. He reached the bunched group and cleft through to the centre. Automatically, his hands reached out, caught the front of a jersey, a knot of hair. He parted them in a second with an ease which shook them and shook himself even more. Sid Price had cracked back against the wall and was slithering dazed to the ground; the girl was sprawling across the table, her head pillowed in her arms, sobbing gustily. Those who had been on the fringe of the action now backed away. They stood in a ragged half-circle, regarding Wilson warily.
Now he had them where he wanted them: Price, in particular. But he had had this moment before. At the recollection, the hot assurance began to evaporate, leaving his body chill and limp. If he threw Price out, the others would give him what little respect they had to give. But if Price turned nasty? He looked at Price: the boy had lost much of his swagger already, if it came to a tussle he would not be difficult to handle. A little tremor passed through his body at the thought of handling Price.
Price watched. He was frightened. Wilson was drawing things out, but Price understood the purpose of that; when you have someone at your mercy it is a good idea to let him sweat a little, particularly if his pals are watching. But as the seconds passed and his pulse began to quieten, a faint, incredulous hope flickered in Price’s eyes. He lowered the lids to conceal his relief; a little smile, no more at first than a nervous reaction, twitched his shaking lips.
Behind Wilson, the threads of control were snapping; feet scraped on the floor, someone moved an arm jerkily and a bracelet jangled. Wilson’s throat ached and his mouth was dry; he ran his tongue over his lips.
‘What was that all about?’
If he had gone crawling to them on his knees he could not have despised himself more than he did at that moment, hearing the weak jauntiness of his voice. Price was easing himself up against the wall, dusting down his sweater, already beginning to preen himself.
‘She kept getting in our way,’ he answered, summoning a shaky arrogance. ‘I warned her.’
‘It must have been annoying, but there are other ways of settling these things.’
Just like a scout master jollying up the cubs! Behind him Wilson heard someone titter. The injured girl, still sprawled across the table, rolled her head to one side and peered up at him resentfully through strands of damp hair.
‘He hit me,’ she whined. ‘He hit me and he twisted my arm and . . .’
‘And I’ll do it again in a minute.’
Price pulled his jersey down across his slim hips and glanced at Wilson. The smile was not nervous now: he was cock of the walk again.
Wilson said: ‘Don’t let’s have any more of this,’ and turned away. He knew, as he walked across to the chess group, that life would never again be tolerable for him with these youngsters. One of the girls piped in exaggerated mimicry: ‘Oh, I say, old fellow! Don’t let’s have any more of this.’ The injured girl and Price were laughing together; he looked across at Wilson and pretended to twist her arm and she gave a shrill, delighted scream. The laughter fanned out round the room. The joke carried them through the rest of the evening; soon they began to indulge in horseplay that grew more and more outrageous.
Jill sat quietly with the more sober members of the play-reading group, her head well down over a copy of one of the plays. When at last the ordeal was over, she stayed behind to help Wilson clear up. She began to sort through the plays while he put away the table tennis gear. She watched him from where she was sitting on a pile of drapes which had been produced for the coming Easter pageant. When the table legs collapsed, released too soon by his fumbling fingers, she said:
‘Why did you let him get away with it?’
He kicked at the table.
‘The last time I didn’t let someone get away with it, he ended up in hospital.’
‘You mustn’t let things get out of proportion,’ she said in a rather lecturing tone. ‘If you had called Sid Price’s bluff he would have folded up completely.’
He sat down beside her. Glancing at him sideways she saw that his hair was beaded with sweat. He was hunched forward and the damp shirt was stretched tight across his arched back. She could sense the strain of the whole of his body from the sight of the taut muscles at the back of his neck. She put her hand on his arm and he shivered.
‘What is it?’ she whispered, feeling suddenly inadequate, all her comfortable formulae deserting her. ‘You mustn’t worry about that other lad. It wasn’t your fault.’ She was running her hand back and forward across his shoulders, trying to soothe him. ‘It wasn’t your fault. You were trying to defend something that mattered to you and you went about it the wrong way; but . . .’
‘No!’ He turned on her. She felt the weight of his body against hers, pushing her back to the wall. ‘No! I don’t want you to believe that.’
Her arm was round his shoulders still. He was very close to her. She was beginning to be afraid, yet she continued to hold him as though something terrible might happen if she let go. She put up her free hand to his face and pushed the damp hair back from his forehead. She did not know why she was behaving like this, except that there seemed to be no alternative.
‘You mustn’t upset yourself like this,’ she whispered. ‘You’re not bad.’
Her tenderness made him despairingly brutal.
‘I enjoyed it. Once I started hitting him it was as though something was released in me. I knew just how he felt when he broke up that café. Only I was breaking up a human being, which is much more exciting because you get a response, and you need to feel something twist and turn beneath your hands; and the more you feel it the more it exhilarates you and the more you want to . . .’
There was a lot more, but she was not thinking of the frantic words, only of the agony that wrenched them from him. At first, she hardly realized that she had brought his head down against her shoulder, that his hands were touching her and that they were not gentle. She accepted, quite calmly, that his pent-up misery must find release; she had no thought of den
ying him his need, whatever it might be. Even when the tumult of words had ceased, she remained still while his hands explored parts of her body which had always been very private to her before. How far she would have let him go, she had no idea afterwards. She felt remote, as though this were happening to someone else; she stroked his head once or twice, when he hurt her she did not cry out, but sometimes she whispered soothing, stupid things as though he were a child. It was he who suddenly stopped, lying quite still against her for a moment and then rolling away to lie face down on the floor. After a while, she leant across and laid her hand gently on his shoulder. She said, ‘You’re all right, then?’ or some such meaningless phrase. He jerked away from her. She got up and tidied her clothes; then she went to the washing-up sink and bathed her face.
She was quite calm when she walked past Sid Price, crouched against the side wall of the hall. He heard her footsteps, slow but regular, on the gravel path and then, still unhurried, fading away along Sloe Lane. Somewhere between Shepherd’s Bush and Chelsea the calm evaporated. She just managed to get the door of her flat open before she broke down. Her friend came out of the sitting- room and found her in the hall, weeping bitter, silent tears. When at last Jill was in bed, the friend enquired:
‘Do I have to ring the police, get a doctor, or just offer sympathy?’
She listened for a while and then said impatiently:
‘Really, Jill! You’re not safe to be let out on your own with a full-grown male.’
Jill turned her face to the wall. The friend, who thought this was a rather tedious exhibition, went out after a few minutes. Jill lay still, feeling his hands move on her breasts, across her thighs. She was conscious, as she had not been at the time, that he had handled her roughly and it suddenly seemed to her that this was an indication of gross disrespect. And she had offered no resistance! She had even caressed him while he invaded the privacy of her body. She felt deeply ashamed. What had prompted her to abandon herself to him? Why had it seemed at the time that to refuse him what comfort he needed would be unthinkable? Her face burnt at the memory. In future he would think of her as he must think of that girl with the flame-coloured hair; only she would have managed things better, she would have resisted a little to start with to make it more interesting for him. Had he, in fact, lost interest? Was that why he had turned from her without demanding final satisfaction? The pain at the thought that his desire had failed cut sharper than ever shame had done. And then, as she lay there remembering his embraces, she felt the throb of something that was neither pain nor shame, a signal from the unknown darkness of her body where some sleeping creature stirred at last.
Chapter Eight
I
Ralph was enjoying himself as he hurried along the Uxbridge Road. Admittedly, things had been bleak lately, but he was a man who must always find some cause for enjoyment sooner or later. Now he had just missed his bus stop because he was lost in conversation. A delightful conversation. The man had been reading The Napoleon of Notting Hill; one met so few people one could talk to about books that the missing of a bus stop was a small price to pay. As he turned away from the Uxbridge Road, he was chanting to himself:
For every tiny town or place
God made the stars especially
Babies look up with owlish face
And see them tangled in a tree.
He had got to the bit about ‘Where your tall young men in turn / Drank death like wine at Austerlitz’ when he reached the vicarage wall. Not that one really approved of the sentiment; but there was a vigour about the thing which was damned attractive and one had to admit that Chesterton, like Kipling, knew how to turn a phrase. Of course, Chesterton was fortunate; he had lived in London at a time when it still retained a few fragments of romance, the days of gaslight and the hansom cab . . . He was fumbling with the vicarage gate now, and even as he did so some of the warmth drained from him; there was a feeling in his head as though a band were being drawn very tightly round his temples. Lately, in the house, he began to feel that he was in a sick-ward, harried on all sides by urgent demands which followed so fast one on another that he became incapable of coherent thought; he was reduced to a pair of arms and legs, a tired body and an aching head with nothing at the centre to hold things together. He must get away from it, he told himself as he walked slowly up the drive; he must get away because there were other and more important things for him to do. He took out his keys and unlocked the door. Already, the discussion on The Napoleon of Notting Hill was forgotten.
He went up the stairs to his study. Then he heard Sarah singing. How touching her voice was, high, a little breathless. He listened. The tune was ‘John Brown’s Body’, but the words sounded unfamiliar. He went softly along the landing and opened the door of her room. She was sitting on her bed and she was singing, ‘Sukie Price’s mother is a silly old cow’. It was so unexpected that he could scarcely control the laughter that surged up within him. He wanted, for some obscure reason, to hug her; but that would have been very bad training and, in any case, she would have resented the physical contact. So he merely said:
‘Who taught you that, Sarah?’
‘Matt Pegrum.’
Her eyes met his and then slid away again. She swung her legs to and fro and hummed a few more bars.
‘Isn’t he the Australian boy that you say is smelly?’
She nodded.
‘I think that’s a rather smelly song, don’t you?’
She considered this statement, her face screwed up in what he suspected to be a reflective parody of one of her school mistresses.
‘Yes.’ She gave a sharp little nod, as though awarding him ten out of ten. ‘I think you’re probably right.’
Having made his point, he prepared to withdraw.
‘Why don’t you go downstairs to the sitting-room? It’s warmer there.’
‘I’ve got to practise for my part in the Easter pageant.’
As far as he knew she had nothing to do in the Easter pageant but stand still with a crowd of other children; but he supposed that this was an excuse to be left on her own so he made no further comment. He listened outside her door for a moment; but there was no more singing, only some ratherstrenuous breathing.
When he got back to his study he found to his irritation that Wilson was waiting for him in the corridor. He looked so solemn that Ralph was certain that he had something of fundamental importance to say. But why be so solemn about it? Had he been like that at Wilson’s age? There flashed across his mind the interview in which he had told his father that he intended to go into the church. ‘Rubbish!’ his father had said. ‘In a few years you’ll be called to the bar.’ And Ralph had actually replied, in all seriousness, that he had heard a higher call. Ah well! he thought, as he beckoned Wilson into the study, perhaps a sense of humour only comes with the years.
‘Sarah seems very taken up with the pageant,’ he said.
‘I think she enjoys it,’ Wilson agreed.
Ralph looked down at his desk and absently jabbed a pencil at a plan of an airfield which was spread out there.
‘This won’t take long,’ Wilson said ominously.
‘My dear chap! I think it’s a good thing for us to have a chat . . .’
‘I’m not making a go of the youth club.’
Ralph put the pencil down, jarred by this uncompromising approach.
‘One doesn’t “make a go” of these things in five minutes.’
‘I’m afraid I’m not the type that will make a go of it in five years.’
Ralph looked at the taut, unhappy face.
‘I do sympathize,’ he said gently. ‘But we all have our doubts.’ Perhaps a little self-confession might help this young man? He sat on the edge of the desk and folded his arms. ‘You know, I sometimes wonder myself whether I am fitted for the work I have undertaken. Progress is slow, and one has setbacks, terrible setbacks like the blackest moments in an illness when one’s very will to live seems to be exhausted. One carries on without
meaning, without conviction . . . The modern equivalent of hell. This is how you feel, I’ expect?’
‘I’m better off without convictions,’ Wilson answered crisply. ‘Once I feel something strongly, I have to force it down other men’s throats.’
Ralph, whose temptations were not physical, murmured vaguely, ‘I suppose one has to guard against being over-zealous.’ He picked up the pencil and looked at it hopefully. ‘It’s all a question of balance.’
‘I’m not well-balanced.’
‘We none of us are. We have to make continual adjustments.’ There was a knock on the front door. Ralph noticed that Wilson’s concentration was broken, and after a moment he interrupted his dissertation on balance to say:
‘Do answer the door if you’re expecting someone.’
As Wilson ran down the stairs, Myra came out from the sitting- room drawing a cardigan round her shoulders.
‘Now who can you be expecting?’ She opened the door and said to Mrs. Thomas who stood on the threshold: ‘Hullo Joan. You’re a great disappointment to Keith. He thought you were one of his girl friends.’
She watched Wilson as he turned away, his feet dragging like a disappointed child’s.
Upstairs in his study, Ralph was not finding it easy to get down to his work. He was staring out of the window, noticing how the light lingered still in the garden.
II
‘We shall soon be into Lent,’ Myra said one evening a week later. ‘Ash Wednesday next week, and then it will be Easter before we know where we are.’
‘Easter!’ Ralph sounded dismayed, as though it had crept up on him unawares. She loved the season, although her pleasure was pagan—joy in the time when the flowers came again and one put away heavy winter clothes. He disliked it. She searched in her work-basket for red silk and wondered why he disliked it so much.
‘Is that Sarah’s costume for the pageant?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ She held it up. ‘Do you like it?’
He blinked. ‘It’s rather gaudy, isn’t it? I don’t think they went in for bright colours . . .’